Industries with paperwork-intensive activities typically suffer from a high cost associated with maintaining and organizing large amounts of paperwork. Such industries may include but are not limited to social services and financial services. In social services, a person claiming benefits, from a government social services program or a private sector employer, ordinarily needs to complete an application or other documentation prior to receiving the needed benefit or care. Also, an employer seeking to recover reimbursements for financial benefits paid out to its employees may have to fill out an application or other documentation. Similarly, in the financial services industry, a person applying for a credit card or new bank account, among other things, may have to fill out an application or other documentation. Also, corporations entering into contracts or providing financial services may generate paperwork related to a contract or a service or sales order. Case workers, human resources employees, and financial services employees then read the applications, contracts, or orders and organize or file them under the appropriate case. In this context, the term “case” may be a general term referring to a centralized holding area, such as in a rudimentary sense a file folder, organized to contain all relevant information and applications for a specific person, company, or transaction. For the social services sector, cases also may be organized by specific benefit applications or by applicants. Following a review process, social services benefits may be dispensed to the applicant claiming them, and financial services, such as credit cards or bank accounts, may be approved.
Databases and electronic applications have improved the efficiency and reduced the amount of paper used by paperwork-intensive industries, such as social services and financial services. Systems such as a mySAP Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system or an Oracle E-Business Suite CRM system now more efficiently process applications, service orders and contracts and organize and maintain the applications, service orders, and contracts in cases. An advantage of such systems is that applicants may now submit application information electronically, eliminating much of the paperwork. Despite the increased efficiency, case workers and financial services employees still have to determine to which case an application pertains and manually assign to a case for organizational purposes. Given that hundreds, if not thousands, of cases may exist in a database or computer system, manual assignment of an application to a case may take up valuable time from a case worker or financial services employee. Also, if cases are organized by application, multiple or redundant cases may exist in a system for a specific applicant. Manual assignment of applications to cases likewise may result in human error causing the accidental creation of redundant cases for a specific person. Multiple or redundant cases have the effect of requiring a case worker or human resources employee to expended unnecessary additional effort and time when assigning a benefits application to a case.
What is needed instead is a method for automatically determining an applicable case to which an application is assigned. A method for automatically assigning the application to the identified applicable case may also increase the productivity and efficiency of case workers and financial services employees.